Destinations

Features

Hotels

Tours

Travel advice: how to find the best-value villa

In terms of the amount of space you get for your money, villa holidays are hard to beat. But prices still vary enormously, depending not only on the country you are visiting, but the region, the distance from the beach, the degree of privacy, whether or not there is a private pool and so on.

To find out where you will get the best value this summer, I asked the self-catering specialist HomeAway, which has some 300,000 properties on its site, for a guide to average rental prices in the key Mediterranean countries. To produce a figure, it calculated the average cost of a week’s rental of three-bedroom self-catered accommodation – not just in each country, but region by region as well, and averaged over the whole season.

The results, which I have analysed below, give only a broad-brush guide to costs and may partly reflect the different styles of accommodation in each destination. Villas with good-size gardens and private pools will normally cost significantly more than the properties quoted. But these figures, along with some additional guidance from local villa specialists, will allow you to work out both the countries and regions offering the best value.

When you travel also makes a difference to cost, so I’ve tried to try to reflect how prices change between June and August. (The data on this was provided by Owners Direct, which has nearly 40,000 properties).

Note that rates given in all cases are for the total rental for the property and do not include flights or car hire. For more advice on cost saving in each destination, see our recent series at telegraph.co.uk/budgettravel.

Turkey – top value all round

Looking purely at the cost of renting, Turkey works out easily as the cheapest country in which to book a villa, with an average price of just £600 for a week. Accommodation in the most popular holiday area – the Lycian and Turquoise Coast – averaged slightly higher than this, at £620, but head north up the Aegean coast, and prices can be exceptionally good value, averaging about £470.

Turkey is easily the cheapest place for villa hire

If you do prefer the Turquoise Coast, however, you will get a much bigger choice of villas. Cachet Travel, a Turkey specialist, says the quiet, rural Datca and Loryma peninsulas, as well as the small resort of Akyaka on the Gulf of Gokova, a small resort that is popular with Turkish holidaymakers, offer some of the lowest prices along this coast.

The downside with Turkey is more expensive car hire, the cost of air fares and the four-hour flight time.

Timing August prices are about 19 to 20 per cent higher than rentals in June.

Portugal – head north

The overall average price of £800 a week masks some wide variations between regions. Better-value areas are the Alentejo and the Lisbon coast (£700). The average price in the Algarve is £850, while Madeira (£630) can be a good-value option for summer.

At the higher end of the market, a three-bedroom villa with pool and air-conditioning in Praia da Gale on the Algarve costs £2,250 in August compared with £1,595 for the same size villa in Gondar in northern Portugal, through Vintage Travel.

The Alentejo in Portugal is better value

Timing A big August price increase applies to the central Algarve region and Vale de Lobo, where you’ll pay 30 per cent more for a three-bedroom accommodation compared with shoulder-season rates.

Spain – stick to the mainland

The average price is £830, but regional variation is also significant here, with the cheapest area, at £540, being the Costa del Azahar, around Valencia. This area and the Costa Calida (£570) were well below the average price even in Turkey, and even Andalusia at £680 is only 10 per cent or so more expensive than Turkey. So once the costs of flights and car hire are taken into account, the Spanish mainland probably offers the best all-round value for a villa holiday – depending on whether you book for one, two or three weeks. However, villas in the Costa Brava (£930) and Balearics (£1,200) are expensive by any standard.

Brittany Ferries has an interesting programme in northern Spain based on its ferry routes from Portsmouth – though the crossings aren’t cheap, you save both on hire car costs and airfares.

Timing Prices rise by 20 to 25 per cent in peak season compared with June.

France – stay up north

France seems expensive with the cost of a week’s accommodation averaging £985, but this masks one of the broadest geographical spreads, with the cheapest regions, Brittany (£600) and Burgundy (£670) looking excellent value. Unsurprisingly, the Côte d’Azur is much more expensive at £1,650 and accommodation in inland Provence comes in at £1,200. The villa specialist, Dominique’s Villas, says you can expect to pay nearly a third less for a large villa sleeping 10 in the Lot-et-Garonne compared with what you would pay for a similar-size property just inland from Nice.

Generally, the farther north you stay, the cheaper the accommodation, though exceptions to this rule include Languedoc-Roussillon and Aquitaine (which includes the Dordogne), which were well below the average price at £730 and £820 respectively.

Timing In Languedoc-Roussillon and Aquitaine, prices in August can be up to 28 per cent more than in June, and in the central, western region of Poitou Charentes there is a peak-season hike of nearly 40 per cent.

Italy – try Calabria

Overall, prices in Italy (£1,000) were similar to those in France, but you can cut costs by heading to less-well-known regions like the Marche (£900), Lazio (£850) and Calabria, Italy’s toe (£600). Puglia, once cheap, is now on a par with Tuscany, Umbria, Liguria, Lombardy and Sicily (all about £1,000). Campania, south of Naples, tops the list at £1,400. But much depends on proximity to particular attractions, or the coast. The villa specialist Think Sicily, says a villa on the sea can cost 50 per cent more than one with distant sea views.

Calabria in Italy is a recommended region to hire a villa

Timing Marche is one of the areas where it will pay to travel outside peak season – weekly rentals rise by about 36 per cent in August, compared with June. In Tuscany, the rise is around 17 per cent, while Umbria sees the smallest price increase (11 per cent).

Greece – head for the Dodecanese

Perhaps surprisingly it is Greece, at £1,200, which came out as the most expensive country overall. High rental costs are not helped by relatively high airfares and hire cars. Even in Greece, however, a tactical approach to booking can bring significant savings. The Peloponnese (£870) offers much better value accommodation and the Saronic Islands (those closest to Athens, including Aegina, Poros, Hydra and Spetses) are also below average rates at £1,000. Prices in Crete average around £1,140, while the Ionian and Aegean Islands range from £1,230 to £1,330.

Timing In Corfu – where demand on the north-east coast in the school holidays is particularly high – weekly rental prices rise by around 40 per cent in August, compared with June. In Crete and Rhodes, there is an increase of 26 per cent and 23 per cent respectively. Generally speaking, the harder it is to reach the island, the cheaper accommodation will be.